THE HERMIT OF BOOT ISLAND.
It was past three o’clock when we cast off the buoy at Mango, and let the schooner go free before the “trade.” It was blowing fresh, but she was travelling faster than the seas themselves, and was as steady as a rock. At dusk we were abreast of a precipitous island, steep, too, on all sides but one, which ran off to a sloping point like the toe of a boot. The skipper was gazing earnestly at the dark line of shore.
“That’s Boot Island,” he said, in answer to my question; “and the other you can just make out to the nor’ward they call Shoe Island. If there was a light on that point I’d have to go in. The old devil that lives there’s as crank as a March hatter, and I promised I’d go in if he made a fire on the beach as I was passing. You see he might be sick or something, and no one’d ever know. Nothing but a bird could land on this side in weather like this. You’ve got to lie on and off on the lee side and send a boat ashore. There’s no anchorage. He’s getting very crank. Bickaway, the storekeeper, sent a boat last week for his copra, but he wouldn’t let him land because it was Saturday. Said he was getting ready for Sunday. The old beggar knew well enough that the boat was chokeful of trade, and he and his women hadn’t enough clothes to cover themselves decently. Bickaway yelled to him that his copra would be rotten before another boat came, but he stood on the beach and waved him off. Said that he couldn’t land before Tuesday, because on Monday he’d be meditating. No, he can’t starve. The women take good care of that. Bickaway saw a fine patch of pumpkins and kumalas, besides cocoa-nuts. He won’t catch fish, because he says it’s wicked to take life. There’s only the two women on the place besides him—his woman and her niece; and he must be pretty rough on them at times, or the girl wouldn’t have swum all the way to Shoe Island, and got picked up by the niggers. They brought her back, too, in their boat, and the old chap let them land, and gave them half his kumala crop—he, that don’t like niggers, least of all the Yathata niggers! They say he’s a Yankee, but no one knows for certain. I suppose I’m the only white man as ever got into his house, and that was five years ago. Oh! it’s a long yarn, and not worth telling. I was ‘beech-de-mar-ing’ at the back of Taveuni. Hadn’t had any luck, and one of the niggers belonging to Yathata—that’s Shoe Island yonder—says, ‘Why don’t you try Yathata, and the white man’s island?’ So I went over there in a boat I had, and worked her over the reef at spring-tide in very calm weather. I’d heard a lot about old Simpson, that he wouldn’t let any one fish his reefs, because the island was his; but I meant to fish whether or no, as the nigger told me that the reef swarmed with teat-fish, and the Chinamen in Levuka were giving fifty-five pounds a ton. As soon as we let go the anchor, the old devil came out of a lean-to he’d knocked together of packing-cases and rusty iron. He was the damnedest old scarecrow you ever see, with a white beard down to his belt, a filthy old shirt, and blue dungaree pants. I made the boys haul the anchor short and keep lifting it, so as she dragged in, and I stood up in the stern pretending to read a book I had.”
The crest of a big sea surging past us lopped on deck, drenching us to the knees.
“Uli!” shouted the skipper to the native steersman. “Here! Soro na sila, some of you!” and as they slacked off the sheet he drew me aft out of the waist, and continued.
“Well, as soon as we touched, I jumped out and waited for him.
“‘What have you come for?’ says he.
“‘Stress of weather and short provisions,’ I says. Then he stood looking at me for about a minute, while I opened my book again. After a bit he turned round, and went into his lean-to. When he’d gone in I come up to the door. There was a mat or two on the bed-place, but the floor was bare gravel, and the table an old packing-case nailed on two sticks stuck in the ground.
“‘What d’yer want?’ he says, when I looked in.
“‘Nothing,’ says I, and sat down in the doorway. After a bit he says, ‘To-day’s the third of June, and a Thursday, else you couldn’t have landed. Who’s Governor now?’
“‘Des Vœux,’ I says.
“‘Never heard of him,’ says he; ‘thought Gordon was. What’s copra?’
“‘Ten pound five in Levuka.’
“‘Then I’ll get eight pound here,’ says he. ‘I see boats and steamers go past most weeks, but I don’t hear much news. When are you going?’
“I wasn’t going to let on about the beech-de-mar racket, so I opens my book and sings ‘Rock of Ages cleft for me.’ Soon as I begun he comes out and stands looking at me. I only knew one verse, but I kep’ on and sung it three times over, keeping as near as I could to the tune, and he kep’ looking at me all the time as solemn as a cockroach. When I done it three times I sang Amen, and he went back into the shanty. Then I took off my hat and knelt up with my hands clasped as if I was praying to myself. Soon as I got up he says, ‘Come in, will yer, and sit down a bit?’ and then he calls his woman and begins talking Tokelau to her, and she fetched in a dish of hot kumalas the old devil had been keeping back till he thought I’d go. Then she got some eggs and took ’em off to the cook-house, and the old beggar sat on the bed all the time and said he’d wait till I’d done. But just as I’d got hold of a kumala he says, ‘Aren’t you going to say grace?’ a bit suspicious-like, and I says, ‘Of course I am, but I always takes hold of the food first;’ so I holds up the kumalas over my head, and says, ‘For what we’re going to receive, Amen.’ But when we’d done dinner we were good friends, and he’d told me all about his soul, and asked after mine; and he sends the girls off with kumalas for my boys. Then I says that idleness is a bad thing, and I’d like ’em to do a little fishing on the reef at low tide, and he says, ‘But you wouldn’t have them take life?’
“‘Certainly not,’ I says. ‘I wouldn’t kill a fish, not if it jumped into my pocket and I was starving, but with beech-de-mar it’s different, for being a slug he ain’t got feelings, and even Darwin ain’t sure that he ain’t a vegetable.’
“‘That’s so,’ says the old beggar. ‘Well, as long as they don’t fish on Saturday or Sunday or Monday I don’t mind.’
“Well, by Friday night we’d got all the fish worth picking up on the lee side, and I got away on the Saturday, and promised I’d call in if I was passing, and there was a fire on the beach,—‘You might be wanting something, or be sick,’ I says.
“‘If I’m sick,’ he says, ‘I shan’t light a fire, for the Lord ’ll provide.’
“Barring religion, the old devil wasn’t so very cranky, except about a sort of fence he’d got under a dilo-tree. I thought it was a grave, and went to look at it, but he come running after me with his eyes half out of his head, and pulled me away by the arm. I suppose his woman had had a kid that had died, and he’d got it buried there. Perhaps it’s that that made him cranky. Well, there’s no fire on the beach, so if he’s alive he don’t want anything.”